Published on December 20 2013 2:06 pm
Last Updated on December 20 2013 2:06 pm
Written by Greg Sapp

State Senator Dale Righter of Mattoon is criticizing the Quinn Administration's "backroom deal" that he says completely undoes the state's efforts to save the Illinois Medicaid program

Righter said, "The administration has negotiated a backroom deal with AFSCME that would halt the state's redetermination efforts using an outside vendor by April 30, effectively eliminating the cornerstone of the Medicaid reform."

To date, 316,000 cases have been reviewed by both Maximus and the state, resulting in the removal of 127,000 cases from the Medicaid rolls. At an average of 1.7 persons per case, the Maximus review process has removed approximately 216,000 people from the rolls.

The 2013 SMART Act...Saving Medicaid and Resources Together...was heralded as a bipartisan package of Medicaid reforms designed to trim costs and improve efficiency in the state's $10 billion Medicaid program. In the negotiations, the General Assembly and Quinn administration agreed to use a private vendor to review all Medicaid cases to determine whether those enrolled in the program were actually eligible for taxpayer-paid healthcare.